After a program to replace old street lights with new, energy-efficient LED lights was put on hold in May over complaints of the brightness and glare, the city has come up with a solution: It will ask residents to rank the LED lights.

The lights are all from different manufacturers and have varying levels of brightness and color range.

"[People] will notice a difference," said Mitch Sears, the sustainability manager for the city of Davis. "Now whether they prefer them or not -- that is a whole other question."

Now that the test LED lights are in place, the city is asking people to go out at night, find the lights marked with special numbers, note the differences, then go online and rank them.

"This is a wonderful town that I live in and [the lights] are an example of it," said Rory Jaffe, a longtime resident who poked fun at the survey. "We just don’t have much else to worry about in Davis, I guess."

The program was originally designed to save the city money in the long run.

It will cost more than $1 million to install all the lights. But once the city pays back the money, it will save about $200,000 a year in energy costs.

Davis already had replaced most of the street lights in the city when complaints started coming in about the brightness, glare and color of the new LED fixtures.

"All of a sudden, we get this super bright light," said Gerrit Buddingh, of Davis. "You can’t see much. It kind of blocks the stars."

Residents now have until Aug. 24 to view and rank the new lights. The City Council will see the results in September and could vote soon after that.

If the council votes to replace the new LED lights already installed with the ones residents voted on, it could add tens of thousands of dollars to the price tag.